Ten issues to watch as Florida lawmakers negotiate a new state budget

Spending less money to catch tax cheats — but more money to support Lionel Messi.

Photo credit: Michael Rivera

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Florida lawmakers began their final budget negotiations on Monday evening, putting the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature on track to finalize a roughly $116 billion state spending plan sometime in the next week or so.

The negotiations process — known as budget “conference” — will ultimately dictate the fate of many policies and programs, from major decisions about job cuts and safety nets to minor choices covering thousands of individual earmarks…some of which have interesting backstories.

As conference plays out this week, here are 10 issues to watch:

Job cuts that could hurt

When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis revealed his recommended budget for the Legislature in December — before he finished crashing out of the presidential campaign — he boasted about how his plan would cut roughly 1,000 jobs across state government.

The cuts would touch almost every corner of state operations. Altogether, the governor’s proposed budget would slash the state workforce from nearly 114,000 to less than 113,000. It would eliminate positions everywhere from local health departments to state agencies serving veterans and people with disabilities.

But while big talk about making bureaucrat heads roll might make for a handy campaign soundbite, this kind of thing can also hurt a lot of people — and not just folks working in state government.

To offer just one small example: DeSantis’ budget would wipe out nearly two dozen positions in the Florida Department of Revenue’s audit unit — a staff that has already shriveled under Republican rule in Tallahassee.

Sacrificing jobs like that — even by simply refusing to fill open positions — ultimately costs the rest of us. That’s because fewer auditors means more tax cheats. And even a drop of just one-half of one percent in voluntary tax payments costs the state more than $330 million a year in lost revenue, according to revenue department estimates.

That said, it’s not clear yet whether lawmakers will go along with DeSantis’ job cuts.

The House of Representatives might like to: It’s budget actually goes a bit further than the governor and cuts a few extra positions. But the Senate budget would instead allow the state’s workforce to grow a little bit.

Altogether, as many as 1,400 jobs are hanging in the balance.

An important anti-poverty program for kids

One of the more encouraging developments of this year’s legislative session has been the willingness of leaders, particularly in the House, to invest more money in the state’s “School Readiness” program. It’s an important anti-poverty program that helps low-income families pay for childcare — allowing parents to work while giving kids at the very bottom of the economic ladder access to early childhood education.

The House is advancing a pair of bills this session (House Bill 929 and House Bill 1267) that would together put nearly $200 million of new money into the program. The spending includes roughly $75 million to expand School Readiness, which currently serves about 210,000 children, to another 10,000 or so kids. It also includes $100 million to increase payments to preschool and daycare providers that participate in the program. And it includes about $25 million to help families ease off the program as their household income rises.

That’s not all. The House also put almost $60 million in its original budget to serve families currently on the waiting list for the program.

But only a fraction of that School Readiness spending appears in the Senate’s budget or its version of the School Readiness bills (Senate Bill 916 and Senate Bill 7052).

Rebuilding crumbling prisons

Late last year, a group of outside auditors delivered a dire report on the condition of Florida’s aging prison system. The auditors found that more than a third of the state’s prisons are already in poor or critical condition and warned that the state will need to spend between $6 and $12 billion over the next 20 years just to catch up. The hole gets even deeper every time the Legislature passes a new law criminalizing more behavior or imposing longer sentences on even non-violent crimes.

While some Twitter-tough legislators mock the need for things like air conditioning in prisons, this is a safety issue for both prisoners and guards. Prisons that lack basic infrastructure — that are, quite literally, falling apart, in some cases — are a big reason why more than a quarter of the Florida’s prisons guard workforce turns over every year and that some prisons are operating with more than half of their positions empty.

The Senate, at least, appears willing to do something about it. Tallahassee’s upper chamber has proposed a plan (Senate Bill 2512) that would dedicate $100 million a year to prison construction and repairs that the Florida Department of Corrections could use as a bonding source.

The House hasn’t proposed anything similar, though.

Taking money from Tampa taxpayers

For three years now, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature have been sitting on more than half a billion dollars taken from taxpayers in Hillsborough County that was supposed to be spent solving traffic problems in and around Tampa.

The money was raised through a local transportation sales tax that Hillsborough County voters approved in November 2018 but that was later ruled unconstitutional by the Florida Supreme Court. That tax generated about $570 million, including interest, before the court killed it. State leaders have been taking their time figuring out what to do with the cash.

One reason the governor and lawmakers have been so slow to act may be that they keep trying to give some of the money to other people.

Last year, for instance, Republican leaders in the state House tried to slip more than $6 million to a handful of high-priced, politically plugged-in lawyers who helped orchestrate lawsuits against Hillsborough’s transit tax. Before that, Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed a convoluted refund plan that could have burned nearly $20 million on overhead and vendor payments.

This isn’t hard. Lawmakers can — and should — spend every dollar of this money on improving the transportation network in Hillsborough County, just like Hillsborough County voters intend when they approved this tax. And they shouldn’t give a single penny to anybody trying to make a buck off the issue.

To his credit, DeSantis seems to have come around on this. His proposed budget would finally put all the money toward local transportation improvements.

But neither the House nor the Senate have said a word about this money yet.

More money for Publix, less for student scholarships

Late in the 2022 legislative session, Florida lawmakers snuck a last-minute provision into a budget bill that ended up steering millions of dollars to stores that sell lottery tickets — at the expense of popular education programs like Bright Futures scholarships.

Then they did it again last year.

And now they might do it a third time.

Buried in the middle of the Florida House’s budget-implementing bill (House Bill 5003) is a provision that would force the Florida Lottery to give retailers a 6 percent cut of lottery ticket sales.

The Lottery had for years paid retailers a 5 percent commission on the tickets they sell or give away as prizes. Bumping that commission to 6 percent generated an estimated $40 million or so last year for all those gas stations, grocery stores and convenience chains.

One the very biggest beneficiaries is Publix Super Markets, which also happens to be the largest corporate campaign contributor in Florida politics right now.  

This isn’t free money. Every extra dollar the Florida Lottery gives to stores is a dollar less that it has left over to transfer to the state’s Educational Enhancement Trust Fund — which pays for Bright Futures.

A haircut for the Florida State Guard

From a politics perspective, the single most interesting thing about the Senate budget might be how much new money it gives Ron DeSantis’ Florida State Guard:

Nothing.

The Senate plan would let the governor-controlled militia to continue spending more than $70 million it got in last year’s budget. But it wouldn’t add a penny more.

And DeSantis wants a lot more than a penny. He’s asked the Legislature to give the Florida State Guard more than $50 million in additional funding — including more than $15 million for “an operations center and logistics warehouse,” plus enough salary money to triple the guard’s paid staff from 11 to 39.

The House is a little less stingy than the Senate — but not by all that much. It would give DeSantis’ militia more money to spend this year, though it would keep the paid staff at 11.

But the House would allow the governor’s guard to spend even more of its leftover money from last year — as long as the DeSantis administration gets moving on a plan to build a new headquarters in Flagler County, which happens to be in House Speaker Paul Renner’s district.

State-sanctioned human trafficking

There’s a similar showdown brewing over another of DeSantis’ favorite pastimes: Trafficking migrants picked up at the Texas border and sending them north to own the libs.

DeSantis has asked for another $6 million for the program, which is formally called the “Unauthorized Alien Transport Program.” But neither the House nor the Senate have included any additional funding in their budgets — though both chambers would allow the governor to continue spending $12 million they gave him last year to move asylum seekers around the country.

An immigrant-hunting airplane

One of the things the country learned during the presidential campaign was how much Ron DeSantis loves planes.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that his proposed budget includes money for two new state planes: $6 million for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to acquire a new twin-engine plane, and $8 million for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to buy a new turboprop outfitted with a multi-sensor, high-speed camera.

The FDLE plane seems like one that would really get this governor’s engines running. According to budget request documents, it’s needed to replace a maritime surveillance airplane that FDLE has been leasing and using primarily to hunt for undocumented immigrants off the coast of Florida. That lease expires this spring.

The Fish and Wildlife plane would be used for search-and-rescue operations, disaster response, and law-enforcement support operations, budget documents say.  

Neither the House nor the Senate have yet budgeted money for either aircraft.

Funding for the state guard, the migrant trafficking program, and the new airplanes all seem like the sort of line items that could very well hinge on what DeSantis decides to do about House Bill 1, the controversial legislation that could ban kids under 16 from social-media platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

DeSantis has criticized the bill. But it’s a top priority for House Speaker Paul Renner. The governor has until Friday to decide whether to veto it — a deadline that will arrive before Renner and the rest of the Legislature finish up the budget.

Donors who could score

Every year, the budget is filled with earmarks that could help large campaign contributors and other influential figures in Tallahassee.

A couple to watch as this budget conference plays out:

The Senate budget includes $350,000 for the Department of Military Affairs to buy hearing-protection equipment. Budget documents show the earmark was requested by representatives from Starkey Hearing Technologies. The company makes hearing equipment and is owned by William F. “Bill” Austin.

Austin is a big campaign contributor: In December alone, campaign finance records show he gave more than $40,000 to Florida Republicans — including $10,000 to a fund controlled by incoming Senate President Ben Albritton (R-Wauchula) and $5,000 to a political committee run by Sen. Jay Collins (R-Tampa), who filed the budget request in the Senate. Back in 2021, records show Austin gave $200,000 to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Then there’s Freddie Figgers. He’s the DeSantis donor and political appointee who nearly a landed a no-bid telecom contract from the governing district at Walt Disney World after DeSantis took it over.

Figgers also chairs a nonprofit organization called the Figgers Foundation, which would get $500,000 under the House budget. The money would buy “Figgers Health” tablet computers to be distributed to at-risk young people and senior citizens, according to budget request forms.

Money for Messi

Finally, deep inside the Florida Senate’s budget is $1 million for a seemingly bland project: “Miami-Dade Park Flood Mitigation and Infrastructure Improvements.”

But it’s a lot more interesting than it sounds on the surface: Request forms show it would pay for site work at Miami Freedom Park — the future home of a new stadium for Inter Miami, the professional soccer franchise co-owned by David Beckham and led on the field by Lionel Messi.

It’s not the only notable sports earmark, either. The Senate budget also includes $350,000 toward construction of a new hockey rink at IMG Academy, the private boarding school in Bradenton for aspiring professional athletes that was bought last year by a Hong Kong-based private equity firm for $1.25 billion.